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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250926T122000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250926T132000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250916T150646Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250916T161628Z
UID:41713-1758889200-1758892800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Is Authoritarian Constitutionalism an Oxymoron?
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Mark Tushnet\, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law\, Emeritus\, Harvard Law School; Co-editor\, Oxford Handbook of Law and Authoritarianism \n\n\n\nProfessor Tushnet\, who graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall\, specializes in constitutional law and theory\, including comparative constitutional law. His research includes studies of constitutional review in the United States and around the world\, and the creation of other “institutions for protecting constitutional democracy.” He also writes in the area of legal and particularly constitutional history\, with works on the development of civil rights law in the United States and a history of the Supreme Court in the 1930s. \n\n\n\nA light lunch will be provided. \n\n\n\nPlease note: In past years\, most EALS talks were in Morgan Courtroom (Austin 308)\, but due to the construction project currently underway next to Austin Hall\, we will hold most EALS talks in Wasserstein Hall this year. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/is-authoritarian-constitutionalism-an-oxymoron/
LOCATION:WCC 3007\, Wasserstein Hall\, 1585 Massachusetts Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/tushnet.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250922T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250922T183000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250916T145848Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250916T145850Z
UID:41708-1758560400-1758565800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Taiwanese Politics and US-China-Taiwan Relations Under Trump 2.0
DESCRIPTION:Register now\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: S. Philip Tsu\, National Taiwan UniversityThis talk will examine this following aspects of the US-Taiwan-China relations: 1. How Taiwan society views the US and China\, and the main developments in Taiwan’s party politics/democratic governance since President Lai was inaugurated in 2024; 2. The implications of US foreign policy under Trump 2.0 for the trilateral relations; and 3. The implications of China’s policies toward the US and Taiwan for trilateral relations. \n\n\n\nRegistration link: https://bostonu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_42BUHhGC7PoMxj8 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/taiwanese-politics-and-us-china-taiwan-relations-under-trump-2-0/
LOCATION:Room 101\, Boston University Kilachand Center For Life Sciences and Engineering\, 610 Commonwealth Ave\,\, Boston\, Massachusetts\, 02215\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BUtrump.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250917T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250917T180000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250904T163729Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250904T164022Z
UID:41533-1758126600-1758132000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:How Should We Study China? A Discussion with Fairbank Center Faculty
DESCRIPTION:As the Fairbank Center celebrates its 70th Anniversary\, a select panel of Fairbank Center Faculty will discuss how we’ve studied China in the past\, and how we should move forward into the future. Join us for this insightful discussion.More information about our panelists coming soon! \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/how-should-we-study-china-a-discussion-with-fairbank-center-faculty/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Special Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/ad2dffd9-02cf-48a9-b38a-78ad4115e0ff.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250908T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250908T131500
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250826T164148Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250827T174443Z
UID:41384-1757332800-1757337300@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:The Enduring Legacies of World War II in East Asia:  Reflections 80 Years Later
DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Thomas Berger\, Professor of International Relations\, Pardee School of Global Studies\, Boston UniversityMark Caprio\,  Professor Emeritus\, Rikkyo University\, Tokyo; Kim Koo Visiting Professor of Korean Studies\, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations\, Harvard UniversityRana Mitter\, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations\, Harvard Kennedy School \n\n\n\nModerator: Christina Davis\, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics\, Department of Government and Director\, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations\, Harvard UniversityThe 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War marks a significant occasion for critical reflections on its legacies in East Asia. China and Taiwan and the two Koreas are still divided and remain major flashpoints with security and political tensions. In the aftermath of WWII\, Japan emerged as a peaceful state\, but its imperial and war legacies have been politically contested. In China\, growing pride and nationalism are driving public discourse about WWII. Leaders in South Korea and Japan\, in the context of China’s rise and the second Trump administration\, have been rethinking their global role and seeking more bilateral cooperation. Our distinguished panel of historians and political scientists will examine how the legacies of WWII still shape the global order among China\, South Korea\, Japan\, and the U.S. today. \n\n\n\nThomas Berger is a Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies\, Division of International Relations at Boston University. .He is the author of Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Johns Hopkins University Press\, 1998) and War\, Guilt and World Politics after World War II (Cambridge University Press\, 2012)\, co-author with Ellis Krauss\, Kerstin Luckner\, Hanns Maull and Alexandra Sakaki ofReluctant Warriors\, Conflicted Allies: Germany\, Japan and the International Security Order (Brookings Institution Press\, 2019)  co-author of  as well as co-editor of  Japan in International Politics: Beyond the Reactive State (Lynne Rienner\, 2007). He has published extensively on East Asian and European security\, German and Japanese foreign policy\, and the politics of historical memory. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.Mark E. Caprio is professor emeritus at Rikkyo University in Tokyo\, Japan. He is the author of Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea\, 1910—1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press\, 2009). Additionally\, he has co-edited a number of volumes\, the most recent being a volume titled Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied (London: Palgrave Macmillan\, 2015). He has also contributed academic articles on colonial-era issues and Korea’s wartime and immediate postwar history that include colonial-era collaboration\, Japan-based Korean repatriation\, Korean attitudes toward the trusteeship plan that the Allied powers wished to impose on Korea\, and Japan’s role in the Korean War to academic journals\, as well as to edited volumes. Presently\, he is working on a monograph that considers overseas Korean efforts during the Pacific War years (1941-1945) to gain favor with the Allied forces (the US\, UK\, Nationalist China\, and the Soviet Union). Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of several books\, including Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II (2013) which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature\, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard\, 2020). His writing on contemporary China has appeared recently in Foreign Affairs\, the Harvard Business Review\, The Spectator\, The Critic\, and The Guardian.  He has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world\, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos. His recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics “Meanwhile in Beijing” is available on BBC Sounds.  He is co-author\, with Sophia Gaston\, of the report “Conceptualizing a UK-China Engagement Strategy” (British Foreign Policy Group\, 2020). He won the 2020 Medlicott Medal for Service to History\, awarded by the UK Historical Association.  He previously taught at Oxford\, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.Christina L. Davis is the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics in the Department of Government and Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University. Her research interests include the politics and foreign policy of Japan\, East Asia\, and the study of international organizations with a focus on trade policy. Her research has been published in leading political science journals. She is the author of Food Fights Over Free Trade: How International Institutions Promote Agricultural Trade Liberalization (Princeton University Press 2003)\, and Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO (Princeton University Press 2012\, winner of the International Law Best Book award of the International Studies Association\, Ohira Memorial Prize\, and co-winner of Chadwick Alger Prize). Her latest book\, Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations\, was released by Princeton University Press in July 2023. Currently\, she is working on several projects on the evolving trade order and economic sanctions. Education: AB in East Asian Studies\, Harvard 1993; Ph.D. in Political Science\, Harvard 2001.Co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Korea Institute\, Harvard University Asia Center\, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies\, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs’ Program on US-Japan Relations \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/the-enduring-legacies-of-world-war-ii-in-east-asia-reflections-80-years-later/
LOCATION:CGIS South S020\, Belfer Case Study Room\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Special Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/WWII-panel.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250907T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250907T160000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250902T180807Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250902T181117Z
UID:41484-1757250000-1757260800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening and Discussion: Caught by the Tides
DESCRIPTION:Buy tickets\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDirected by Zhangke JiaStarring Tao Zhao\, Zhubin LiCaught by the Tides (风流一代) is an ambitious\, genre-blending film from acclaimed Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Spanning over two decades\, the film interlaces newly shot scenes with archival footage\, fragments from Jia’s earlier films\, and documentary-style material to create a haunting portrait of love\, memory\, and transformation in modern China.The story follows Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao)\, a dancer and club performer in early-2000s Datong\, whose lover\, Guo Bin\, abruptly leaves to seek fortune elsewhere. Her quiet\, persistent search for him unfolds against the sweeping changes of the nation—from mass displacement during the Three Gorges Dam project\, to rapid urbanization\, to the isolating years of the COVID-19 pandemic.Post Screening Panel DiscussionOur distinguished panel will delve into the film’s themes and its broader cultural\, historical\, and cinematic contexts. The discussion will consider how CAUGHT BY THE TIDES reflects on China’s transformation\, the interplay between personal stories and national history\, and the ways cinema can blur the lines between fiction and documentary.Shujen Wang\, Professor of Media Studies\, Emerson College; Research Associate\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Harvard UniversityShujen Wang is the author of Framing Piracy: Globalization and Film Distribution in Greater China (2003)\, and her research spans media globalization\, platformization\, film distribution\, piracy\, and global copyright governance. She has contributed to multiple anthologies and published in leading journals including Cinema Journal\, Film Quarterly\, and International Journal of Cultural Studies. Former president of the Chinese Communication Association\, Dr. Wang has served as a research associate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center since 2002 and sits on the editorial advisory boards of several peer-reviewed journals. Her work has been translated into Portuguese and Chinese\, reflecting her global scholarly influence.Catherine Yeh\, Professor of Chinese & Comparative Literature\, Boston UniversityCatherine Yeh’s scholarship examines 19th- and 20th-century Chinese literary\, media\, and visual culture\, with particular attention to the role of entertainment\, literature\, and “marginal” figures in driving modernity. Her books include Shanghai Love: Courtesans\, Intellectuals\, and Entertainment Culture\, 1850–1910 and Performing the ‘Nation’ (co-edited\, 2008). She has written extensively on Shanghai courtesan culture\, the political novel\, the entertainment press\, and the rise of modern Chinese star culture. A recipient of numerous fellowships and research grants\, Professor Yeh’s work illuminates the intersections of art\, politics\, gender\, and urban modernity in China’s cultural transformation.Moderator: Xueping Zhong\, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature\, Chinese Culture\, Film\, Tufts UniversityXueping Zhong is the author of the Masculinity Besieged?: Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century.Screening at West Newton Cinema\, 1296 Washington Street\, West Newton\, MA 02465 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-and-discussion-caught-by-the-tides/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/CBT.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250527T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250527T170000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250521T195316Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250522T232302Z
UID:40485-1748361600-1748365200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:2025 Graduating Student Presentations
DESCRIPTION:From exploring 8th Century art to examining contemporary geopolitics\, Harvard’s Class of 2025 is full of individuals engaged in path-breaking research in Chinese Studies. We’ve selected a few outstanding projects to provide you a glimpse of the bold ideas being put forward by our graduating students.  Come hear lightning talks from the following students: \n\n\n\nJoyce Chen – China’s Socialization in the UN Security Council: The Case of the North Korean Nuclear Issue \n\n\n\nBulelani Jili – Leasing Out Sovereignty: The Proliferation of Chinese Surveillance Technologies in Africa \n\n\n\nChao Lang – From Integration to Isolation: Xinjiang Cotton and Commercial Networks (1759–1890) \n\n\n\nAlex Lee – Anthropomorphic Animals in Chinese Animated Film from the Great Leap Forward \n\n\n\nIsabel McWilliams – In Situ Actualization: The Hyper-bodied Bodhisattva in Eighth Century East Asian Art \n\n\n\nShuhuai Zhang – Zenith of a Dying Breed: The Chinese Communist Party’s Official Propagandists in the Early Reform Years (1976-1994) \n\n\n\nVeronica Peterson – Taking Care: Home Cooking and Cooking for Community in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century Chinese Diaspora \n\n\n\nLaurence Li – “Foreign Adversary” in U.S. Federal Courts \n\n\n\nCosette Wu – The Effect of the 2017 Techno-Geopolitical Shock on the US-Taiwan Innovation Relationship \n\n\n\n A reception will follow for all graduates after the presentations. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/2025-graduating-student-presentations/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Special Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/2025.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250505T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250505T200000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250227T182935Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250227T184322Z
UID:39618-1746468000-1746475200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Spring) Qingchun
DESCRIPTION:More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002)\, documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees\, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019\, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2\,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili\, near Shanghai\, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18\,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring\, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes\, Locarno and Venice film festivals\, respectively. Taken together\, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced\, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry\, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time\, space and the material fabric of our lives.  \n\n\n\nYouth (Spring) QingchunThe first in Wang Bing’s opus centered on young migrant laborers in Zhili employs his trademark long takes and fixed camera setups\, contrasting routine days of sewing\, stitching and scissoring with bustling street scenes and after-hours sequences set in the workers’ cramped living quarters\, chancing upon dramas that inevitably emerge from such a repetitive\, cloistered and threadbare existence. While Zhili’s privatized structure and incentive-based production model allows for certain advantages over the kind of centrally governed factories seen in earlier Wang films like West of the Tracks (2002)\, it also leaves employees at the mercy of predatory managers\, a situation the director depicts as an endless tug-of-war for better pay. With textbook rigor\, Wang captures a new economic reality that\, for all it promises\, has only fostered a new form of exploitation. – Jordan Cronk \n\n\n\nDirected by Wang Bing \n\n\n\nFrance/Hong Kong/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2023\, DCP\, color\, 215 min. Mandarin with English subtitles \n\n\n\nGeneral Admission Tickets $10\, $8 Non-Harvard student\, seniors\, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows. \n\n\n\nSpecial event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20. \n\n\n\nTickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-wang-bings-youth-trilogy-youth-spring-qingchun/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Youth.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250505T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250505T180000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250220T174552Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250418T142355Z
UID:39512-1746460800-1746468000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Robert Campany — Traditions of Exemplary Transcendents (Liexian zhuan 列仙傳): A Reading
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Robert Campany\, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities; Professor of Asian Studies\, Vanderbilt University \n\n\n\nLiexian zhuan\, plausibly attributed to the late Western Han scholiast and court official Liu Xiang 劉向 (79-8 BCE)\, is the earliest extant collection of anecdotes about individuals deemed to have transcended the limits of the human condition to become beings known as xian 仙. In this talk I will explore what it can tell us about the origins and early history of the quest for transcendence. What range of methods does it portray adepts as using to gain extraordinary longevity and other transhuman capabilities? How do its entries depict practitioners’ relations with other people\, with local communities\, and with the landscape? What does the text reveal about the sometimes strange workings of the hagiographic process? (For example\, why do the “wandering women” 游女 mentioned in the Shijing 詩經 poem “The Han is Broad” [“Han guang 漢廣\,” Mao #9] number among its transcendents?) To what extent does the text hold surprises when read against Ge Hong’s 葛洪 similar but much larger compilation made three centuries later? \n\n\n\nRob Campany is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities and Professor of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University. He researches the history of religion in China from the late Warring States to the Tang. His most recent books include The Chinese Dreamscape\, 300 BCE – 800 CE (Harvard University Asia Center Publications\, 2020)\, winner of the Joseph Levenson Prize and the Médaille Stanislas Julien\, and Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China\, 300 BCE – 800 CE (Harvard University Asia Center Publications\, 2023). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-robert-campany-traditions-of-exemplary-transcendents-liexian-zhuan-%e5%88%97%e4%bb%99%e5%82%b3-a-reading/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/RObert-campany.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250501T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250501T171500
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250415T124212Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250415T124502Z
UID:39998-1746115200-1746119700@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Sigrid Schmalzer — The Connected Worlds of Dazhai and the Whole Earth Catalog: Capitalism\, Colonialism\, and Alternative Technology Movements
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Sigrid Schmalzer\, University of Massachusetts Amherst \n\n\n\nSigrid Schmalzer is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research focuses on social\, cultural\, and political aspects of the history of science in modern China and also includes the history of science activism transnationally. She is the author of The People’s Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China (Chicago 2008)\, Red Revolution\, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China (Chicago 2016)\, and numerous other publications. She is also the editor of the UMass Press book series Activist Studies of Science and Technology and serves as Co-President of the Massachusetts Society of Professors (the union of faculty and librarians at UMass Amherst). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/sigrid-schmalzer-the-connected-worlds-of-dazhai-and-the-whole-earth-catalog-capitalism-colonialism-and-alternative-technology-movements/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Room S153\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/sigrid.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250430T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250430T180000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250307T130747Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250416T191105Z
UID:39730-1746030600-1746036000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:2025 Charles Neuhauser Memorial Lecture featuring Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns — Lessons from the Front Lines of the U.S.-China Relationship
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: R. Nicholas Burns\, U.S. Ambassador to China\, 2021-2025; Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations\, Harvard Kennedy School \n\n\n\nAmbassador Nicholas Burns is the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is the Founder and Faculty Chair of the Future of Diplomacy Project. He is also a Faculty Affiliate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.  \n\n\n\nBurns served as the U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from 2021-2025\, leading public servants from forty-eight U.S. government agencies at the U.S. mission to China in overseeing one of America’s most important and challenging bilateral relationships. During his tenure\, he helped to stabilize relations with Beijing while competing with China on military\, technology\, economic\, and human rights issues. \n\n\n\nBurns worked in the United States government for over three decades\, serving six presidents and nine secretaries of state. As a career Foreign Service Officer\, he was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008; the State Department’s third-ranking official when he led negotiations on the U.S.–India Civil Nuclear Agreement; a long-term military assistance agreement with Israel; and was the lead U.S. negotiator on Iran’s nuclear program. He was U.S. Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005) when the Alliance invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty on 9/11 in defense of the United States and embarked on military missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Burns was the Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001) and State Department Spokesman (1995-1997). He worked for five years (1990–1995) on the National Security Council at the White House at the end of the Cold War where he was Senior Director for Russia\, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and Director for Soviet Affairs in the Administration of President George H.W. Bush. Burns also served in the American Consulate General in Jerusalem (1985-1987) where he coordinated U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and before that\, at the American embassies in Egypt (1983-1985) and Mauritania (1980 as an intern). He was a member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board (2014-2017). \n\n\n\nProfessor Burns is Vice Chairman of the Cohen Group and Co-Chair of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences\, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and a life-long member of Red Sox Nation.  \n\n\n\nProfessor Burns has received fifteen honorary degrees\, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award\, the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award\, the Committee of 100 Leadership in Diplomacy Award (2024)\, the Aspen Strategy Group’s Leadership Award (2021)\, the Ignatian Award from Boston College (2017)\, the New Englander of the Year from the New England Council (2016)\, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Johns Hopkins University\, the Boston College Alumni Achievement Award\, and the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University. He has a BA in History from Boston College (1978)\, an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1980) and he earned the Certificat Pratique de Langue Francaise at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (1977). He was a Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in summer 2008. \n\n\n\nAbout the Charles Neuhauser Memorial Lecture:Charles Neuhauser was a senior intelligence analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency\, from 1958 until October 1981. His career with the CIA spanned the period from the Great Leap Forward through the Cultural Revolution and its immediate aftermath. From 1966 to 1967\, just as the Cultural Revolution was going through its most violent phase\, Charles Neuhauser spent a year at The Fairbank Center for East Asian Research\, where he worked on the causes of the Cultural Revolution. \n\n\n\nThis annual lecture series was established in 1988 thanks to the generosity of Charles Neuhauser’s brother\, Paul Neuhauser. Its purpose is to maintain bridges between the worlds of government\, policy\, and the intelligence community and the university world. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/2025-charles-neuhauser-memorial-lecture-featuring-ambassador-r-nicholas-burns/
LOCATION:Hall C\, Science Center\, 1 Oxford St.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Special Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/nick-burns-2-e1762450690862.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250430T133000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250430T163000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250411T214600Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260127T181445Z
UID:39984-1746019800-1746030600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening\, Part 2 – River Elegy (河殇)\, Episodes 3 - 6 featuring Andrew S. Erickson & Shih-Diing Liu
DESCRIPTION:Andrew S. Erickson\, Professor of Strategy\, China Maritime Studies Institute\, U.S. Naval War College; Visiting Scholar 2024-25\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Harvard UniversityShih-Diing Liu\, Professor of Communication and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies\, University of Macau; Visiting Scholar 2024-25\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Harvard University \n\n\n\nJoin us for the second part of our special screening of River Elegy (河殇)\, the landmark 1988 Chinese documentary series that ignited nationwide debate with its bold critique of China’s historical path and traditional culture. This event will feature commentary from two of our current visiting scholars\, Andrew S. Erickson (U.S. Naval War College) and Shih-Diing Liu (University of Macau). \n\n\n\nWe will present a newly restored digital transfer of the final four episodes of River Elegy: “Aura” (Episode 3)\, “A New Era” (Episode 4)\, “Worries” (Episode 5)\, and “Azure” (Episode 6). All episodes are in Chinese with newly translated\, English-language subtitles. \n\n\n\nFirst aired on CCTV1 in June 1988\, River Elegy uses the color “yellow” (symbolizing the Yellow River and the Yellow Emperor) as a metaphor for cultural and political stagnation\, contrasting it with “blue” (representing the open sea and maritime exploration) as a symbol of modernity and openness. Through poetic narration and a provocative visual collage of archival footage\, the series critiques China’s Confucian traditions and historical isolationism\, arguing that these forces hindered the country’s progress in the 20th century. It calls instead for reform\, global engagement\, and celebrates the economic liberalization taking place under Deng Xiaoping. \n\n\n\nRiver Elegy struck a deep chord with a generation navigating the tensions of modernization. Its writer\, Su Xiaokang\, quickly became one of China’s most prominent public intellectuals. The documentary received high-level endorsement from Party figures including former president Yang Shangkun\, Deng Pufang (son of Deng Xiaoping)\, and premier Zhao Ziyang—each of whom supported and even hosted special screenings of the series. But following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests—which some scholars argue were partly catalyzed by River Elegy’s widespread influence—the series was banned amid a sweeping political crackdown. \n\n\n\nDecades later\, River Elegy remains a powerful historical document. Its themes continue to resonate\, particularly as the liberal values that the series championed—democracy\, human rights\, the rule of law—appear increasingly embattled\, not only in China\, but also in the United States and around the world. \n\n\n\nAndrew S. Erickson is a Professor of Strategy in the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute\, which he helped establish and has served as Research Director\, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He testifies periodically before Congress and briefs leading officials\, including the Secretary of Defense. Erickson helped to escort the Commander of China’s Navy on a visit to Harvard and subsequently to establish\, and to lead the first iteration of\, NWC’s first naval officer exchange program with China. He has received the Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal\, NWC’s inaugural Civilian Faculty Research Excellence Award\, and NBR’s inaugural Ellis Joffe Prize for PLA Studies. His research focuses on Indo-Pacific defense\, international relations\, technology\, and resource issues. Dr. Erickson was a 2019-2022 Visiting Scholar.Shih-Diing Liu is Professor of Communication and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies\, University of Macau. Liu’s research focuses on exploring the emotional dynamics of politics\, the formation of popular identity\, the expressive and embodied forms of political practices\, and the psychology of nationalism in contemporary China. His books include The Politics of People: Protest Cultures in China (SUNY Press\, 2019) and Affective Spaces: The Cultural Politics of Emotion in China (Edinburgh University Press\, 2024\, with Wei Shi). Continuing with a focus on emotion from the Affective Spaces project\, his current research explores the intersection of affect and gender in contemporary China. Arguing that Chinese gender has increasingly become an archive of feelings marked by ambivalence toward authorities\, this book project uncovers the power of emotion in negotiating the gendered order. Meanwhile\, he is also working on a book project that explores the emotional capabilities of Artificial Intelligence.Schedule:1:30 pm: Introductory Remarks by Shih-Diing Liu \n\n\n\n1:45 pm: Episode 3: “Aura” & Episode 4: “A New Era” (71 min.)3:00 pm: Comments from Andrew S. Erickson \n\n\n\n3:15 pm: Episode 5: “Worries” & Episode 6: “Azure” (66 min.) \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-discussion-river-elegy-%e6%b2%b3%e6%ae%87-episodes-3-6-featuring-andrew-s-erickson-and-shih-diing-liu/
LOCATION:CGIS South S020\, Belfer Case Study Room\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-11-at-5.16.52 PM.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250429T203000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250429T220000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250130T143321Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250415T162133Z
UID:39211-1745958600-1745964000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Urban China Lecture Series Featuring Claudia Huang — Play a day\, count a day: planning for old age in contemporary urban China
DESCRIPTION:Zoom meeting link\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Claudia Huang\, California State University\, Long Beach \n\n\n\nThe current generational cohort of Chinese retirees have gotten a tough bargain in many ways. Because the one-child policy created an upside-down population pyramid\, the customary practice of aging at home under the care of an adult child is becoming increasingly untenable. At the same time\, the social welfare programs that the government promised in exchange for their reproductive sacrifices never materialized\, leaving retirees to plan for old age on their own. Many older adults have responded to these policy reversals by focusing on leisure and enjoyment as much as possible– an attitude they call “play a day\, count a day.” The stories I share paint a portrait of life at the limits of affective governance\, showing that while the state can attempt to control life trajectories\, it cannot determine people’s attitudes about their own experiences. \n\n\n\nClaudia Huang is an anthropologist by training and an assistant professor of human development at California State University\, Long Beach. She conducts ethnographic research in Chengdu\, Sichuan\, where she examines the ways in which macro-level policies affect people’s intimate experiences of growing older. Her first book\, titled Dancing for their lives: the pursuit of meaningful aging in urban China was recently published with the series on global aging at Rutgers University Press. \n\n\n\nZoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97147498753 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/urban-china-lecture-series-featuring-claudia-huang/
LOCATION:Presented via Zoom
CATEGORIES:Urban China Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/claudia-huang.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250428T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250428T171500
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250220T192839Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250407T152951Z
UID:39543-1745856000-1745860500@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Economy Lecture featuring Ka Zeng — Chains of Resilience? The U.S.-China Trade War and Firm Backshoring
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Ka Zeng\, Professor of Political Science\, University of Massachusetts-Amherst \n\n\n\nAmid rising U.S.-China strategic competition\, efforts to decouple the two largest economies or mitigate the vulnerabilities posed by increased economic interdependence through “de-risking” strategies have threatened to upend the extensive supply chain relationships between the two countries. To what extent have recent geopolitical tensions generated by events such as the trade war influenced the decision of China-based U.S. multinational corporations to bring production back home through the so-called backshoring? Are U.S. firms more heavily dependent on China-centered supply chains more or less likely to engage in such activities? This paper addresses these questions through an analysis of a novel firm-level dataset on publicly reported backshoring cases. Our analysis yields some evidence that U.S. tariffs negatively impacted firms’ investment activities. Interestingly\, firms with more Chinese supply chain partners are more likely to backshore production in response to trade protectionism\, but it also takes them longer to do so. In other words\, while trade policy uncertainty may compel firms to relocate production\, factors such as contractual commitments\, significant sunk costs\, and the high costs of switching business partners may nevertheless limit their ability to sever existing supply chain relationships and prolong the process of backshoring. Our findings therefore highlight the contradictory incentives that trade policy uncertainty presents to firms and point to the importance of a sound supply chain ecosystem in mitigating external risks\, while also serving as a potential source of resilience in U.S.-China trade relations. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-economy-lecture-featuring-ka-zeng/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Economy Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Ka-Zeng.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250428T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250428T160000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250407T153516Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250418T140835Z
UID:39965-1745852400-1745856000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Visiting Scholar Presentation featuring Zimeng Pan — China's Current Patriotic Education: From Policy to Practice
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Zimeng Pan\, 2024-25 Visiting Scholar; Professor in the Department of International Studies and Director of the Research Center for Discourse and Society\, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics \n\n\n\nChina’s current patriotic education is deeply embedded in President Xi’s ideology of Cultural Confidence with an aim of strengthening national identity and unity through traditional cultural values and nationalist legacies. This presentation will first provide a brief overview of China’s patriotic education policies from 1978 to 2024\, followed by a rich account of how its current ideology of patriotism has been interpreted and reproduced by practitioners and the public\, particularly in the fields of education and media. Findings of two ethnographic research and corpus-assisted discourse research projects will be introduced. Detailed topics that are to be discussed include national textbook designs\, classroom practices\, AI-assisted education\, and female image constructed in media. This presentation will show how ‘patriotism’ and ‘culture’ are conceptualized and reconceptualized in the current Chinese context and how grassroots practices have been accordingly influenced. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/visiting-scholar-presentation-featuring-zimeng-pan-chinas-current-patriotic-education-from-policy-to-practice/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Room S050\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Special Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Pan_-Zimeng-Photograph-scaled-e1718909279947.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250426T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250426T200000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250227T183103Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250227T184059Z
UID:39622-1745690400-1745697600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Hard Times) Qingchun: Ku
DESCRIPTION:More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002)\, documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees\, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019\, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2\,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili\, near Shanghai\, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18\,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring\, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes\, Locarno and Venice film festivals\, respectively. Taken together\, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced\, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry\, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time\, space and the material fabric of our lives.  \n\n\n\nYouth (Hard Times) Qingchun: Ku \n\n\n\nFocusing on the factory laborers’ economic struggles and workplace conflicts\, the second installment of Youth follows multiple narrative threads that stretch and tighten\, sometimes to a breaking point of violence and despair. A young woman keeps making mistakes and must redo several batches of trousers\, while her colleagues discuss ways to dodge the manager’s surveillance. Just released from police detention after an altercation with his boss\, a young man searches in vain for his lost account book. Parents pore over sewing machines while their child plays with scissors and cell phones. From the balcony outside their shop\, a group of workers watch their indebted boss beat up a fabric supplier and run away without paying their wages\, so they sell the shop’s sewing machines while the landlord cuts the power and water of their living quarters. In another dark dorm\, a worker who made tons of unsold denim recounts his participation in a labor riot and the ensuing police brutality. The exhaustion of overtime and deadlines thus alternates with the anxiety of dead time and wasted time\, accruing into the bitterness at the core of Wang Bing’s trilogy. \n\n\n\nDirected by Wang Bing \n\n\n\nFrance/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2024\, DCP\, color\, 226 min. Mandarin with English subtitles \n\n\n\nGeneral Admission Tickets $10\, $8 Non-Harvard student\, seniors\, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows. \n\n\n\nSpecial event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20. \n\n\n\nTickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-wang-bings-youth-trilogy-youth-hard-times-qingchun-ku/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Youth-Hard-Times.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250425T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250425T200000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250227T183657Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250227T183658Z
UID:39630-1745604000-1745611200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Homecoming) Qingchun: Gui
DESCRIPTION:More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002)\, documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees\, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019\, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2\,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili\, near Shanghai\, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18\,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring\, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes\, Locarno and Venice film festivals\, respectively. Taken together\, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced\, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry\, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time\, space and the material fabric of our lives.  \n\n\n\nYouth (Homecoming) Qingchun: Gui \n\n\n\nThe final installment of the Youth trilogyzooms in on a handful of workers as they return to their villages for the Lunar New Year\, meanwhile zooming out spatially from Zhili’s garment workshops to China’s vast countryside. After seeking payment of their owed wages\, Mu Fei and Dong Minyan board a packed train to Yunnan and take a van up a hazardous mountainside road. In homes decorated with giant Chairman Mao portraits\, their parents speak of illnesses and injustices\, debts and expenses. Firecrackers\, a confetti gang\, bride-carrying and karaoke create an exuberant atmosphere at Shi Wei’s and Liang Xianglian’s wedding. From the southwest mountains\, the film moves to the lower Yangtze River to celebrate the God of Prosperity and another wedding banquet. After the holidays\, the bride Fang Lingping takes her husband to Zhili and teaches him to sew. The last third of the film revisits familiar characters from Spring and Hard Times such as Lin Shao and Chen Wenting\, no longer teenagers in love but young parents\, uncertain how the cycles of seasonal labor will shape their children’s future. \n\n\n\nDirected by Wang Bing \n\n\n\nFrance/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2024\, DCP\, color\, 160 min. Mandarin with English subtitles \n\n\n\nGeneral Admission Tickets $10\, $8 Non-Harvard student\, seniors\, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows. \n\n\n\nSpecial event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20. \n\n\n\nTickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-wang-bings-youth-trilogy-youth-homecoming-qingchun-gui-2/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Youth-Homecoming.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250425T084500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250425T170000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250221T211400Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250421T135230Z
UID:39546-1745570700-1745600400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:2025 Gender Studies Workshop — The Beauty and the Book: Women\, Knowledge\, Literature\, and Book Culture in Late Imperial China and Beyond
DESCRIPTION:This year’s Gender Studies Workshop—The Beauty and the Book: Women\, Knowledge\, Literature\, and Book Culture in Late Imperial China and Beyond: A Conference in Honor of Ellen Widmer—will explore new directions in the study of writings by and about women in late imperial China and will take place on April 25\, 2025. The conference is generously sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation\, Wellesley College\, Fairbank Center (Harvard University)\, and Asia Center (Harvard University). It will have four panels: 1. Uncovering the Hidden; 2. New Perspectives on Gender Roles and Gender Boundaries; 3. Gender and Knowledge; 4. Modern\, Post-modern\, Diasporic\, and Transnational Reverberations. \n\n\n\nPanel 1\, Uncovering the Hidden (9:00a.m.-10:30a.m.)Chair and Moderator: Elizabeth J. Perry\, Harvard UniversityDiscussant: Dorothy Ko\, Barnard College \n\n\n\nEllen Widmer\, Wellesley College — Mingyuan shiwei\, Zhang Hao\, and Wang Duanshu’s Editorial HandWu Hung\, University of Chicago — What is She Reading? A Closer Look at Some ‘Beautiful Women’ Paintings from Late Imperial ChinaGrace Fong\, McGill University — A Significant Year: Zong Wan’s Diary of My Sojourn in Baoding\, 1877Shengqing Wu\, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — Embodying ‘Pure Love’: Tactility and Female Subjectivity in Republican Literature \n\n\n\nPanel Two: New Perspectives on Gender Roles and Gender Boundaries (10:45a.m.-12:15p.m.)Chair and Moderator: Robin Yates\, McGill UniversityDiscussant: Sophie Volpp\, UC BerkeleyJudith Zeitlin\, University of Chicago — The Gender of the Operatic Voice from Li Yu (1611-1680) to Xu Dachun (1693-1771)Wai-yee Li\, Harvard University — The Pleasure of Refusal: New Perspectives on Desire in Chen Duansheng’s (1751-1796) Love in Two Lives (Zaisheng yuan)Maram Epstein\, University of Oregon — How Conservative is Hou Zhi (ca. 1768-1830)?Rania Huntington\, University of Wisconsin Madison — A Laughing Flower’s Guide to the Party: Knowledge\, Pleasure\, and Pattern in Jinghua yuan (Flowers in the Mirror) \n\n\n\nLunch Break (12:15-1:30p.m.)\, Common Room\, 2 Divinity Avenue \n\n\n\nPanel Three: Gender and Knowledge (1:30-3p.m.)Chair and Moderator: Catherine Yeh\, Boston UniversityDiscussant: Cynthia Brokaw\, Brown University \n\n\n\nHuan Jin\, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — Gender Dynamics in Late Imperial Letter-Writing ManualsXu Man\, Tufts University — The Precious Mirror for Womanly Virtue (Kunde baojian): A Daily-Use Encyclopedia for Women in High Qing ChinaSuyoung Son\, Cornell University — Female Authorship for Technical WritingJoan Judge\, York University — Women as Vernacular Knowers in China’s Long Republic (1894-1954): What We Can Learn from Cheap Print \n\n\n\nPanel Four: Modern\, Post-modern\, Diasporic\, and Transnational Reverberations (3:15p.m.-4:45p.m.)Chair and Moderator: David Wang\, Harvard UniversityDiscussant: Eileen Chow\, Duke University \n\n\n\nHyaeweol Choi\, University of Iowa — Christian Networks and Gender Norms in Colonial Korea from a Transnational PerspectiveEmma Teng\, MIT — Cooking and Gender/Cooking and Genre: Grace Zia Chu (1899–1999)Paize Keulemans\, Princeton University — The Poisonous Touch: Haptic Modes of Reading and Playing in Jin Ping Mei in the Late Ming and Early Twenty-first CenturyMingwei Song\, Wellesley College — The Rise of She-SF: Chinese SF’s Next WaveReception (5p.m.-6p.m.)\, Common Room\, 2 Divinity Avenue \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/2025-gender-studies-workshop-the-beauty-and-the-book-women-knowledge-literature-and-book-culture-in-late-imperial-china-and-beyond/
LOCATION:Yenching Auditorium\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Gender Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/gender.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250423T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250423T200000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250415T122628Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250415T122629Z
UID:39995-1745431200-1745438400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:JFK Jr. Forum — The Long Game and What Comes Next: Where U.S.-China Competition Has Come From and Where It’s Going
DESCRIPTION:Register now\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Rush Doshi\, Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs on National Security Council (2021-2024)Moderator: Rana Mitter\,  ST Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia Relations\, Harvard Kennedy School \n\n\n\nThe 2025 S.T. Lee Lecture will give attendees insight and guidance on how to view U.S.-China completion and how grand strategy may play a role here. The S.T. Lee Lecture focuses on military history and how it might shape global approaches to policymaking. The lecture also reflects Dr. Lee’s dedication to providing a platform for scholars and policymakers to address critical international issues. \n\n\n\nPlease register with a valid Harvard email address to attend in-person. All JFK Jr. Forums are publicly livestreamed on their YouTube channel. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/jfk-jr-forum-the-long-game-and-what-comes-next-where-u-s-china-competition-has-come-from-and-where-its-going/
LOCATION:JFK Jr. Forum\, Harvard Kennedy School\, 79 John F. Kennedy St.\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250423T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250423T131500
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250220T185404Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250331T132825Z
UID:39531-1745409600-1745414100@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Suisheng Zhao — The Dragon Roars Back: Xi's Power Concentration and Foreign Policy Implications
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Suisheng Zhao\, Suisheng Zhao\, Professor and Director\, Center for China-US Cooperation\, Josef Korbel School of International Studies\, University of Denver \n\n\n\nDiscussant: Robert Ross\, Professor of Political Science\, Boston College; Fairbank Center Associate \n\n\n\nSuisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at Josef Korbel School of International Studies\, University of Denver. A founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China\, he is member of the Board of Governors of the US Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific\, a member of National Committee on US-China Relations\, a Research Associate at the Fairbanks Center for East Asian Research in Harvard University\, and a honorary jianzhi professor at Beijing University\, Renmin University\, China University of International Relations\, Fudan University and Shanghai foreign Studies University. A Campbell National Fellow at Hoover Institution of Stanford University\, he was Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Washington College in Maryland\, Associate Professor of Government and East Asian Politics at Colby College in Maine and visiting assistant professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at University of California-San Diego. He received his Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of California-San Diego\, M.A. degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri and BA and M.A. degrees in economics from Peking University. He is the author and editor of more than ten books\, including: China and East Asian Regionalism: Economic and Security Cooperation and Institution-Building (Routledge 2012)\, In Search of China’s Development Model: Beyond the Beijing Consensus\, (Routledge 2011)\, Village Elections in China (Routledge\, 2010)\, China and the United States\, Cooperation and Competition in Northeast Asia (Palgrave/Macmillion\, 2008)\, China-US Relations Transformed: Perspectives and Strategic Interactions (Routledge\, 2008)\, Debating Political Reform in China: Rule of Law versus Democratization (M. E. Sharpe\, 2006)\, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford University Press\, 2004)\, Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior (M. E. Sharpe\, 2003)\, China and Democracy: Reconsidering the Prospects for a Democratic China (Routledge\, 2000)\, Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China\, Taiwan\, and the Crisis of 1995-96 (Routledge\, 1999). His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly\, The Wilson Quarterly\, Washington Quarterly\, International Politik\, The Hague Journal of Democracy\, European Financial Review\, The China Quarterly\, World Affairs\, Asian Survey\, Asian Affairs\, Journal of Democracy\, Pacific Affairs\, Communism and Post-Communism Studies\, Problems of Post-Communism\, and elsewhere. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/critical-issues-confronting-china-series-featuring-suisheng-zhao-the-dragon-roars-back-xis-power-concentration-and-foreign-policy-implications/
LOCATION:CGIS South S020\, Belfer Case Study Room\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Critical Issues Confronting China,Critical Issues Confronting China Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250422T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250422T163000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250130T142439Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250415T162814Z
UID:39203-1745334000-1745339400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Urban China Lecture Series Featuring Mark Baker — Pivot of China: Spatial Politicsand Inequality in Modern Zhengzhou
DESCRIPTION:Zoom meeting link\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker:  Mark Baker\, University of Manchester \n\n\n\nThis event series is sponsored by the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab\, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning\, and the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. \n\n\n\nZoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97147498753 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/urban-china-lecture-series-featuring-mark-baker-2/
LOCATION:Presented via Zoom
CATEGORIES:Urban China Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250422T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250422T133000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250409T162359Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250409T162400Z
UID:39974-1745323200-1745328600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Economic Conjunctures: Planners\, Residents\, and Chinese-Led Urban Development in Nairobi
DESCRIPTION:Register now\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Elisa Tamburo\, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow\, Anthropology Department\, Harvard University; School of Geography and the Environment\, University of Oxford \n\n\n\nModerator: Michael Puett\, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology; Harvard College Professor; Director\, Harvard University Asia Center \n\n\n\nSince the early 2000s\, the rise of Chinese businesses in the construction sector of Nairobi has transformed how the city is planned\, built\, and lived. The talk sets out to examine such urban transformations from the point of view of builders\, planners\, and residents. Not only does Chinese-led urban development divide the Kenyan urban middle class\, but it evidences a multiplicity of interests among Chinese stakeholders. In examining how Chinese entrepreneurs have come to thrive in the real estate market in Nairobi\, the paper enlivens the role of transnational economic and temporal conjunctures\, which can impact individual and family trajectories in significant ways. \n\n\n\nRegistration appreciated for planning purpose.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/economic-conjunctures-planners-residents-and-chinese-led-urban-development-in-nairobi/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Room S153\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250421T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250421T173000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250122T200154Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250416T161124Z
UID:39124-1745251200-1745256600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture featuring Joseph Ho — Developing Mission: Photography\, Filmmaking\, and American Missionaries in Modern China
DESCRIPTION:Register for hybrid zoom attendance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Joseph Ho\, Associate Professor of History\, Albion College\, Michigan; Center Associate\, Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies\, University of Michigan  \n\n\n\nDeveloping Mission is a transnational cultural history of US and Chinese communities framed by missionary lenses through time and space – tracing the lives and afterlives of images\, cameras\, and visual imaginations from before the Second Sino-Japanese War through the first years of the People’s Republic of China. When American Protestant and Catholic missionaries entered interwar China\, they did so with cameras in hand. Missions principally aimed at the conversion of souls and the modernization of East Asia\, became\, by virtue of the still and moving images recorded\, quasi-anthropological ventures that shaped popular understandings of and formal foreign policy toward China. Portable photographic technologies changed the very nature of missionary experience\, while images that missionaries circulated between China and the United States affected cross-cultural encounters in times of peace and war. Developing Mission illuminates the centrality of visual practices in the American missionary enterprise in modern China\, even as intersecting modernities and changing Sino-US relations radically transformed lives behind and in front of those lenses. In doing so\, Developing Mission reconstructs the almost-lost histories of transnational image makers\, subjects\, and viewers across twentieth-century China. \n\n\n\nJoseph W. Ho is Associate Professor of History at Albion College\, Michigan\, and a Center Associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. He is a historian of modern China and Taiwan\, Sino-US encounters\, and transnational visual culture and media. He has published essays on his research in several edited volumes\, as well as the UCLA Historical Journal\, U.S. Catholic Historian\, and Education About Asia. Ho is the author of Developing Mission: Photography\, Filmmaking\, and American Missionaries in Modern China (Cornell University Press\, 2022).Also Presented via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_y84X7LHMSTe1bqk20XXmgQ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-featuring-joseph-ho-developing-mission-photography-filmmaking-and-american-missionaries-in-modern-china/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:FCCS Modern China
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250421T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250421T130000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250410T182756Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250415T145054Z
UID:39978-1745236800-1745240400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Visiting Scholar Presentation featuring Shih-Diing Liu — Who’s Afraid of Gender? Revisiting Engendering China 31 Years On
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Shih-Diing Liu (刘世鼎)\, Professor of Communication and Senior Research Fellow\, Institute of Advanced Studies\, University of MacauDiscussant: Susan Greenhalgh\, Professor of Anthropology; John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society\, Harvard UniversityThis presentation has two intertwined goals: to highlight the significance of gender in understanding Chinese society and to underscore the role of emotion in shaping gender dynamics in China and beyond. I will develop my discussion by revisiting Engendering China: Women\, Culture\, and the State\, an edited volume published by Harvard University Press in 1994\, just before the landmark Beijing Women’s Forum in 1995. Through a symptomatic reading of Engendering China\, I articulate my perspective on the gender-emotion nexus—an articulation often overlooked not only in Chinese studies but also in gender studies more broadly. Rather than focusing on the conventional notion of gender “consciousness\,” I advocate for a critical inquiry into gender “emotion” –  to explore the deeply felt but often unrecognized and repressed dimensions of gendered feelings\, experiences\, fantasies\, investments\, promises\, and practices. My analysis of pop culture and stardom illustrates that gender power operates not merely through structural imposition but through emotions. By recontextualizing Judith Butler’s polemic Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024)\, my presentation examines how the return of the repressed—including emotions such as fear\, anxiety\, optimism\, and frustration—shapes the gender landscape\, offering new insights into both its constraints and possibilities for emancipation. \n\n\n\nShih-Diing Liu (刘世鼎) is Professor of Communication and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies\, University of Macau. Liu’s research focuses on exploring the emotional dynamics of politics\, the formation of popular identity\, the expressive and embodied forms of political practices\, and the psychology of nationalism in contemporary China. His books include The Politics of People: Protest Cultures in China (SUNY Press\, 2019) and Affective Spaces: The Cultural Politics of Emotion in China (Edinburgh University Press\, 2024\, with Wei Shi). Continuing with a focus on emotion from the Affective Spaces project\, his current research explores the intersection of affect and gender in contemporary China. Arguing that Chinese gender has increasingly become an archive of feelings marked by ambivalence toward authorities\, this book project uncovers the power of emotion in negotiating the gendered order. Meanwhile\, he is also working on a book project that explores the emotional capabilities of Artificial Intelligence. \n\n\n\nSusan Greenhalgh (葛苏珊) is Professor of Anthropology and John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society at Harvard University. Before moving to Harvard\, she was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California\, Irvine and\, before that\, Senior Research Associate of the NYC-based Population Council. \n\n\n\nIn April 2016\, Greenhalgh was named Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for twelve months starting July 2016. At Harvard\, she was named Walter Channing Cabot Fellow for the year for the 2015 publication of her book\, Fat-talk Nation. Her most recent book is Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/visiting-scholar-presentation-featuring-shih-diing-liu-whos-afraid-of-gender-revisiting-engendering-china-31-years-on/
LOCATION:Room K354\, CGIS Knafel\, 1737 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Special Event
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250418T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250419T173000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250403T205350Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250403T211309Z
UID:39950-1744984800-1745083800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:What is China? New Perspectives in New Eras — An International Symposium 
DESCRIPTION:Keynote Speaker: Ge Zhaoguang 葛兆光\, Fudan UniversitySpeakers:April 18\, 2-5:30pm\, Yenching AuditoriumMark C. Elliot\, Harvard UniversityJames Robson\, Harvard UniversityPeter K. Bol\, Harvard UniversityRonald C. Po\, London University of Economics Kung Ling-wei\, Academia Sinica David Der-wei Wang\, Harvard UniversityApril 19\, 9:30 am – 5:30pm\, The Yenching Common RoomLi Yuyang\, Beijing Normal UniversityYing Lei\, Amherst College Tu Hang\, National University of SingaporeRichard Yu-cheng Shih\, Brown University Liu Shih Diing\, University of MacauDingru Huang\, Tufts UniversityDavid Dadui Yao\, Hainan University Kyle Shernuk\, Georgetown UniversityMichael Hill\, College of William and MaryMichael O’Krent\, Harvard University Li Jing\, Chinese National Academy of ArtsYedong Sh-Chen\, Harvard UniversityRoundtable:Chair: David Der-wei Wang \,Harvard UniversityAnnie Zhanling Wang\, Harvard UniversityJames Evans\, Harvard University Sophie Xiaofei Lei\, (Harvard UniversityShengqiao Lin\, Harvard UniversitySponsors:Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Harvard-Yenching Institute East Asian Languages and Civilizations\, Harvard University Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/what-is-china-new-perspectives-in-new-eras-an-international-symposium/
LOCATION:Yenching Auditorium\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Special Event
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250417T143000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250417T160000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250409T161655Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250411T214929Z
UID:39970-1744900200-1744905600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Rethinking Taiwan Workshop - New Interpretations of Taiwan History and Identity
DESCRIPTION:Speakers:Chia-Chiun Shih Chen (陳嘉君)\, 2024-25 Visiting Fellow of Practice; Chairperson\, Shih Ming-Te Cultural FoundationSarah Plovnick\, 2024-25 Hou Family Post-Doctoral Fellow in Taiwan Studies\, Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesHardy Stewart\, 2024-25 Hou Family Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Taiwan Studies\, Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesModerator: David Der-wei Wang\, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature\, Harvard UniversityJoin us for three presentations by Taiwan experts on new interpretations of Taiwan’s history and identity. David Der-wei Wang\, Eric C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Culture\, will join as discussant. \n\n\n\nRethinking Taiwan Identity—Chia-Chiun (Jessica Gina) Chen Shih \n\n\n\nShifting the Taiwan narrative in American public discourse—Sarah Plovnick \n\n\n\nPhantom Routes\, Phantom Roots: Diaspora Subjects of Provincial Taiwan (1885–1915)—Hardy Stewart \n\n\n\nChia-Chiun Shih Chen (陳嘉君) is the chairperson of Shih Ming-Te Cultural Foundation. Her research project examines how the widespread systematic deployment of informants and secret police during the Taiwanese White Terror Period (1949-1991) affected Taiwanese democratization and political culture \n\n\n\nSarah Plovnick received her PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of California\, Berkeley. Sarah uses ethnographic methods to study the role of communication media in contentious political environments. Her dissertation\, entitled “Listening Through the Firewall: A Sonic Narrative of Communication Between Taiwan and mainland China\,” examines the recent history of the Taiwan Strait (1949-present) from the perspective of sound and audio technologies\, from loudspeakers and radio through social media and videogames. \n\n\n\nHardy Stewart Hardy Stewart is a Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese Language at the University of California\, Berkeley\, where he works on Taiwanese literature and poetry. Hardy asks how classical Chinese poetry traveled to Taiwan and changed or was changed by the island context. His doctoral dissertation\, “Man Beyond the Sea 海外人: Hong Qisheng 洪棄生 (1866–1928) and Peripheral Poetics of Provincial Taiwan\,” studies the influence of marginality on the genesis of cultural style and historical representation. \n\n\n\nDavid Der-wei Wang holds a joint appointment in Comparative Literature. He is Director of CCK Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinological Studies\, and Academician\, Academia Sinica. His research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature\, late Qing fiction and drama; comparative literary theory; colonial and modern Taiwanese fiction\, and Asian American and diasporic literature; plus Chinese intellectuals and artists in the mid-20th century. Wang took his B.A. in foreign languages and literature from National Taiwan University\, and his M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1982) in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Wang taught at National Taiwan University (1982-1986) and Columbia University (1990-2004). He first came to Harvard in 1986\, serving as Assistant Professor of Chinese for four years. He rejoined the Harvard faculty in 2004\, when he was named Edward C. Henderson Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Wang’s recent publications include Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule (co-ed. with Ping-hui Liao\, 2007)\, Globalizing Chinese Literature (co-ed. with Jin Tsu\, 2010)\,and The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis (2014). He is Editor of Harvard New Literary History of Modern China (forthcoming\, 2015). Wang received the Changjiang Scholar Award in the PRC in 2008. He was the 2013-14 Humanitas Visiting Professor of Chinese Studies at CRASSH\, the Centre for Research in the Arts\, Social Sciences and Humanities\, at Cambridge University (U.K.)\, where he gave a series of three public lectures on the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese literature. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/rethinking-taiwan-workshop/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Room S153\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Taiwan Studies
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250416T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250416T131500
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250220T184151Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250220T184152Z
UID:39528-1744804800-1744809300@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Li Zhang — Anxious China: Rethinking Therapeutic Governing Before and After the Pandemic
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Li Zhang\, Professor of Anthropology\, University of California-Davis \n\n\n\nDiscussant: Arthur Kleinman\, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology; Professor of Medical Anthropology in Social Medicine; Professor of Psychiatry\, Harvard University \n\n\n\nLi Zhang (Ph.D. Cornell 1998) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California-Davis. She is the author of three award-winning books: Strangers in the City (Stanford 2001)\, In Search of Paradise (Cornell 2010)\, andAnxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy (UC 2020). She is also a co-editor of Privatizing China\, Socialism from Afar (Cornell 2008) and Can Science and Technology Save China? (Cornell 2020). Broadly speaking\, her research concerns social\, political\, spatial and psychological repercussions of the post-Mao economic reform and postsocialist transformations in contemporary China. Currently\, she is working on a new project on aging\, care\, and the digital divide in post-COVID 19 China. She was a 2008 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and the President of the Society of East Asian Anthropology (2013-15). She also served as Interim Dean of the Division of Social Sciences (2015-17) and Chair of Anthropology Department (2011-15) at UC Davis. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/critical-issues-confronting-china-series-featuring-li-zhang-anxious-china-rethinking-therapeutic-governing-before-and-after-the-pandemic/
LOCATION:CGIS South S020\, Belfer Case Study Room\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Critical Issues Confronting China,Critical Issues Confronting China Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250416T113000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250416T130000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250326T190146Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250326T190148Z
UID:39895-1744803000-1744808400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Indigenous Narrative: The Dynamic Biographies of gShen-rab Mi-bo\, Founder of the Tibetan Bon Religion
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Konchok Tsering\, Assistant Professor\, School for Tibetan Studies\, Minzu University of China; HYI Visiting Scholar\, 2024-25 \n\n\n\nChair/Discussant: Janet Gyatso\, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies\, Harvard University \n\n\n\nThis talk delves into the transformation of gShen-rab Mi-bo’s life stories within the Tibetan Bon religion\, examining three significant texts: mDo ‘dus\, mdo gzer mig\, and mdo dri med gzi brjid. Each biography\, emerging from distinct historical contexts\, showcases the evolving nature of Bon religious thought and its interaction with cultural influences. The mDo ‘dus\, a concise tenth-century work\, is recognized as an early foundational narrative. mdo gzer mig\, believed to originate in the eleventh century\, is essential for understanding the integration of Buddhist elements within Bon literature. The expansive mdo dri med gzi brjid\, from the fourteenth century\, enriches the narrative tapestry with folkloric and cultural details\, demonstrating how oral traditions have shaped its development. This exploration highlights the adaptive storytelling of the Bon tradition\, reflecting shifts in historical and cultural landscapes. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/indigenous-narrative-the-dynamic-biographies-of-gshen-rab-mi-bo-founder-of-the-tibetan-bon-religion/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250415T203000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250415T220000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250324T155316Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250324T155317Z
UID:39888-1744749000-1744754400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Urban China Lecture Series Featuring Cecilia Chu — Building Colonial Hong Kong: The Production of Space in a Speculative City
DESCRIPTION:Zoom meeting link\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Cecilia Chu\, Associate Professor in Architecture\, The Chinese University of Hong Kong \n\n\n\nThis talk will explore three central aspects of urban development in colonial Hong Kong: the advent of modern planning closely entwined with early British segregation policies; the role of property investment in the shaping of building forms; and the emergence of a distinct urban milieu in which different constituencies sought to claim a stake in a burgeoning colonial economy through housing speculation. Two historical periods will be revisited: the mid-1890s\, which witnessed the disastrous plague outbreak that prompted the territory’s first large-scale urban renewal project\, and the early 1920s\, when the opening of New Kowloon and intensified land speculation led to a series of ambitious planning schemes along racial lines. The intersections of economic interests and the politics of race have contributed to the forms and norms of the city and an evolving sense of local identity. Notably\, these discourses and policies have remained powerful frameworks for urban transformation in the post-colonial present. \n\n\n\nCecilia L. Chu is an Associate Professor and Director of the MPhil-PhD Programme in the School of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Trained as an urban historian with a background in design and conservation\, her works focus on the social and cultural processes that shape the forms of built environments and their impacts on local communities. She is the author of the award-winning book\, Building Colonial Hong Kong: Speculative Development and Segregation in the City\, which received the 2023 Best Book in Non-North American Urban History Award from the Urban History Association and the 2024 International Planning History Society Book Prize. Her other book publications include The Speculative City: Emergent Forms and Norms of the Built Environment (2022) and Hong Kong Built Heritage (forthcoming 2025). \n\n\n\nWe would like to thank the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab\, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning\, and the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies for supporting this event. Please subscribe to our mailing list if you’d like to receive e-mail notifications: http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/urbanchinaseminar. \n\n\n\nZoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97147498753 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/urban-china-lecture-series-featuring-cecilia-chu-building-colonial-hong-kong-the-production-of-space-in-a-speculative-city/
LOCATION:Presented via Zoom
CATEGORIES:Urban China Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250414T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250414T180000
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250220T174124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250220T174126Z
UID:39509-1744646400-1744653600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Tamara Chin — How to Do Things with Loanwords: Premodern Sino-Xenic Language Contact in Modern Philology\, Linguistics\, and Politics\, 1870-1970
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Tamara Chin\, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature\, Brown University \n\n\n\nThe study of ancient language contact traditionally lacked prestige in both Confucian classical studies and European philology.  This changed somewhat in the early twentieth century.  The discovery of multilingual manuscript archives in and around Dunhuang coincided with the internationalization of Western-style linguistics\, prompting both scientific and political interest in the linguistic dimension of cross-cultural contact.  This talk explores where\, when\, and why during the 1870-1970 period spanning the late Qing through the Cold War\, Sino-xenic language contact became both a dedicated object of academic inquiry and a political symbol of internationalist ideals.  I ask what did the new units of analysis—such loanwords taken from foreign languages and transcriptions of sounds across writing systems—do to the mainstream study of national traditions?  To better understand how we study ancient language contact now\, I return to the role of loanwords within earlier debates about the disciplinary aims and methods of Dongfang xue\, Oriental Philology\, historical phonology\, and Area Studies. \n\n\n\nTamara Chin works on Han dynasty literature\, cross-cultural history and aesthetics\, and the modern reception of antiquity.  She is an associate professor of comparative literature at Brown University and the author of Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism\, Chinese Literary Style\, and the Economic Imagination (Harvard 2014).  The talk draws on her second book\, The Silk Road Idea: Ancient Contact in the Modern Human Sciences\, 1870-1970 (currently under review). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-tamara-chin-how-to-do-things-with-loanwords-premodern-sino-xenic-language-contact-in-modern-philology-linguistics-and-politics-1870-1970/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250414T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250414T161500
DTSTAMP:20260518T031724
CREATED:20250324T135522Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250324T135524Z
UID:39884-1744642800-1744647300@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Visiting Scholar Presentation featuring Andrew Erickson — China’s Naval Leadership: Corruption and Capabilities
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Andrew Erickson\, Professor of Strategy\, China Maritime Studies Institute\, U.S. Naval War College \n\n\n\nRegarding China’s ability to seize Taiwan or achieve other top-level military objectives\, does corruption matter? Since assuming power in 2012\, paramount leader Xi Jinping has officially purged seven sitting and retired members of the Central Military Commission (CMC)\, including two Vice Chairmen. Beyond the CMC\, many other military leaders have likewise fallen\, including more than a dozen senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officials and defense industry executives over the past two years. The fight against “corruption” appears to be intensifying in 2025\, with more shoes set to drop. Second-ranked CMC Vice Chairman General He Weidong has not appeared at two recent meetings at which his attendance would be expected. Despite PLA Navy (PLAN) Political Commissar Yuan Huazhi having an inherently high-profile public role\, he has not been seen or heard from publicly since 7 September 2024. Many in the media and beyond speculate that these purges are significantly disrupting and limiting China’s military capabilities.  \n\n\n\nThis presentation will examine politicized corruption-related removals within PLAN leadership specifically and argue in contrast that their imposition of costs regarding endemic behavior are fundamentally a speedbump at most\, rather than a showstopper. Related removals are neither an indicator of prohibitive service incompetence nor a self-defeating constraint on operational capabilities. The PLAN may be playing high-stakes musical chairs with its leadership\, but it has a deep enough talent pool to do so without prohibitive problems and enjoys substantive strengths in its own right. Regardless of corruption’s pervasive persistence\, cutting-edge ships and weapons systems regularly enter service and PLAN capabilities to employ them operationally continue to improve. Corruption may impose inefficiencies\, but does not curtail the PLAN’s rapid advances across the waterfront. \n\n\n\nAndrew S. Erickson is a Professor of Strategy in the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute\, which he helped establish and has served as Research Director\, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He testifies periodically before Congress and briefs leading officials\, including the Secretary of Defense. Erickson helped to escort the Commander of China’s Navy on a visit to Harvard and subsequently to establish\, and to lead the first iteration of\, NWC’s first naval officer exchange program with China. He has received the Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal\, NWC’s inaugural Civilian Faculty Research Excellence Award\, and NBR’s inaugural Ellis Joffe Prize for PLA Studies. His research focuses on Indo-Pacific defense\, international relations\, technology\, and resource issues. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/visiting-scholar-presentation-featuring-andrew-erickson-chinas-naval-leadership-corruption-and-capabilities/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Room S050\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Special Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Erickson-180110-N-FC129-026-3-e1597252590898.jpeg
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